southwest air | Amy Mengel

I was on vacation last week and then had a quick family trip home, so I missed out on a whirlwind week of media news. Perhaps that’s why it’s been hard for me to get back into the swing of blogging this week: I feel as though everything has been discussed to death. I’ve also barely made a dent in my Google Reader (the “mark all as read” button is looking more tempting each day).

Here’s what the rest of the media-obsessed world was focused on while I was on the slopes, and what those conversations looked like to a relatively disengaged observer:

Super Bowl

More specifically, Super Bowl commercials. I still have only seen a handful of them. It seemed there was more news before the Super Bowl about who wasn’t advertising (Pepsi) and whether that was “risky” or not. From passively scanning my Twitter stream, the Google ad seemed to be a hit. The Tim Tebow ad generated controversy primarily for not being as controversial as many thought it would. I saw a lot of chatter about the lack of pants in a few ads (hmm…). Overall, it didn’t seem that people were too jazzed about the commercials this year, which this Huffington Post article seems to concur with.

Google Buzz

Goodness were people ever up in arms about Google Buzz! From a few brief checks of Twitter you’d think the Interwebs were under siege from Palo Alto. The main issues I saw people frustrated with were privacy issues, the lack of filtering/overabundance of information, and the muddling of GMail with other social outposts. So many people rained on the Google Buzz parade so heartily that by the time I got back home and had the option to check it out or “turn it on”, I didn’t even bother. I may revisit in a few weeks to see if I have any use for it (thought based on my comatose use of Google Wave so far, I’m not sure it’s the ticket for me).

The Olympics

Consensus: NBC totally sucks at covering them. NBC is refusing to broadcast events live in hopes of forcing people to watch taped segments during primetime to please advertisers. That leaves Twitter, blogs, and countless other Web sites to act as spoilers during the afternoon. Not only is the coverage bad, it’s late and it’s old news when it airs. ComputerWorld had one of the better pieces on why NBC is “against the Internet” in terms of Olympic coverage. I’ve missed almost all the coverage so far.

I did see a lot of disgust and surprise from those I follow on Twitter that networks would (repeatedly) show graphic footage of the Georgian luge athlete’s fatal crash. I share the disgust, but not the surprise. Sensationalism rules TV news these days, and just as we saw graphic and tragic images from the Haiti earthquake, it was inevitable that news channels would broadcast this video. I don’t think they needed to do it as frequently or callously (apparently CBS showed the crash in slow motion), however. Other Olympic story lines I passively observed: Whales (but not fail whales?) were the highlight of the Opening Ceremonies. The weather in Vancouver is abysmal. Shaun White needs a haircut.

Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines

I watched the initial Twitter outrage against Southwest Airlines for how they grievously wronged director/actor Kevin Smith, and then saw the negative sentiment gradually shift toward Smith himself as he continued to berate the airline after they had pretty openly addressed the issue and made apologies via their blog and other channels. Some, like Sonny Gill, even seemed to think that Smith was bullying or antagonizing Southwest.

It would have been very interesting to see how this would have played out differently had it been Delta (the airline that lost my luggage twice on my vacation and caused me to spend a less-than-glamorous evening in a Romulus, Mich. Best Western instead of a Utah ski house) or American or United. Those airlines certainly don’t have the customer loyalty or goodwill that Southwest has built up. I think much of the reason SWA will be able to weather this is that they’ve taken the time to build a positive reputation among customers who are perhaps going to be a little more forgiving of this incident. I liked Adam Kmiec’s dissection of the situation and Southwest’s response.

So, that’s what the Web world looked like to me over the last 10 days as I scanned Twitter and Facebook and blogs here and there to try and remain somewhat connected. What else did I miss?

“It’s not rocket surgery.”

That malapropism became a bit of a mantra at last week’s Inbound Marketing Summit.

Social media isn’t complicated. When you boil it down it’s about listening to your customers, being helpful by offering your knowledge and giving them interesting content to share and thereby advocate for you. The IMS speakers shared several case studies (yes, too many of them mentioned Comcast and Zappos) on how organizations have embraced social media to connect with and built trust and affection among customers. None of the examples required hyper-specialized knowledge or technology for a company to connect with people.

So why is it so difficult for so many companies to successfully integrate social media? I dug through my (30 pages of) notes to try and find some themes in what the speakers shared and came up with a this list of why organizations might be getting hung up.

1. They can’t talk about anything broader than their own products

Chris Brogan shared how Citrix Online created the Workshifting community to address the rise of telecommuting and remote work. Sure, it ties in with Citrix’s GoToMeeting/Webinar/PC product line, but the blog isn’t a commercial for its products. The same holds true for Kodak’s photography blog that Chief Blogger Jenny Cisney talked about. It’s about photography and creativity in general, not about Kodak cameras. Greg Matthews shared how Humana developed the Freewheelin bicycle sharing communities with plenty of online and “real life” components to the program. Bicycles don’t have much to do with health insurance specifically, but they are about being healthy. If a company is only talking online about its specific products and not looking for ways to connect to the bigger picture, it’s pretty difficult for people to be engaged.

2. They listen to customers but don’t take any action

If you’re going to listen to your customers, you’d better be ready to do something about what you hear. Valeria Maltoni noted that if a company creates an online presence that’s open and allows customer feedback, it creates the expectation that the company is going to do something with that feedback. Worse than not being heard is being heard and then ignored. Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines shared how a simple blog post stating the airline was considering assigned seating amassed tons of customer comments showing a lack of support for the idea. This feedback changed the direction of their internal debate and led to a new boarding procedure that maintained the open seating arrangement.

3. They aren’t calibrated internally with the technology

Jason Falls chastised corporate Web sites for being little more than online brochures. Customers expect interaction. Content creation is key to social media success, and every company should have a Web site with a content management system that allows for quick, easy content creation without the IT department needing to recode a Web site. Anyone in the organization should be able to publish via a CMS. And companies can’t expect to have a strong social media presence when social sites are blocked internally to employees.

4. They’re not framing risk accurately

Dharmesh Shah reminded us all that a corporate blog has never been fatal to an organization. NBC cameraman Jim Long said the often a company’s entry into social media is a clumsy, shotgun blast and that there’s an equal chance of looking foolish by having a ham-fisted marketing department launch a social media presence as there is if a rogue employee “goes off” on Twitter. The risk of social media is not abated by not participating. And really, while there have certainly been some hiccups and miscues along the way, social media has yet to be the undoing of any company.

5. Their internal culture isn’t aligned for social media success

In Shiv Singh’s presentation, he discussed how the customer should be at the core of the brand. When policies, procedures, products and processes become more important than the customer, there’s no way social media efforts can be effective. When your employees are more concerned with what’s in or out of their job description than doing the right thing to help the customer, that’s not a culture that’s likely to build trust and advocacy for your brand. Yes, Zappos was cited time and again as a case study, but largely because it has a culture that makes social media work. All of its employees are focused on customer service at the core. The same holds true for Southwest Airlines.

I could go on and on. So many of the speakers at IMS shared great examples of simple, effective social media strategies that have humanized organizations and allowed them to build better relationships with customers. But time and again companies are either rejecting social media or participating in a way that defeats the purpose.

It’s not rocket surgery.

Image via Flickr user StephenHackett

Amy Mengel

I used to have a blog here.

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